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Root
) Mercedes Griffeth (1991) | full_name = Samantha Groves | alias = Root Caroline Turing Kelly Dyson Miss May Veronica Sinclair Jane Von Neumann Robin | status = Alive | birthdate = Unknown, 1979 | age = 33 | death = | id = | SSN = | occupation = Hacker Assassin Office assistant at OSC | residence = Washington D.C., USA | origin = Bishop, TX, USA | affiliation = | family = Unnamed mother | first = | flashback = }} Samantha Groves, also known by her hacker name Root, is a highly intelligent computer hacker and contract killer with an obsessive interest in The Machine and Harold Finch. Biography Sam Groves was born in Bishop, Texas and lived there until her mother died around 2002. According to Sam, in discussions with Finch, her mother told her to follow her talents - and she was good at computers and inflicting harm on others without guilt or remorse (although she would later tell Finch she wasn't a sociopath, though sometimes wished she was so her actions would've been easier). Also, as a child, computers made more sense to Sam than people, who she sees as "bad code". She admitted she has been waiting for someone who shared her understanding of technology her whole life. 1991 Sam and her friend Hanna Frey were playing computer games in the local library until it closed for the day. After her friend left, Sam stayed a little longer successfully finishing The Oregon Trail. When she wanted to leave the library, she saw Hanna getting into a car that belonged to Trent Russell, a local man who was a member of the book club. . ]] She recognized his car and told the librarian, Barbara Russell, about what she saw, but since the librarian was in love with Trent she scared Sam into keeping it to herself. Two years after Hanna disappeared, Sam hacked into a drug lord's bank account and stole $100,000 from him, using the money to frame Trent for the robbery and thereby setting him up to be killed. Sam later moved to New York and became a professional assassin and ruthless hacker-for-hire, under the alias "Root". Root does not enjoy killing people, but "(she) doesn't feel bad about it either". 2012 Root was hired by Pete Matheson to assassinate Congressman Michael Delancey. Through the use of a patsy, Scott Powell, Root was successful. However, her plan to kill Powell afterwards was foiled due to the timely intervention of John Reese. Ultimately, the operation fell apart as Reese took out one of her men and stole his phone while Finch provided a phone recording to the FBI proving Matheson's involvement, although she managed to briefly hack into Finch's network during the affair, presumably learning about Finch and The Machine in the process. . ]] Realizing that her plan had failed, Root killed her client and staged it as a suicide out of guilt for his actions, exonerating Powell. Root abandoned her location, the dorm room of an unsuspecting college student who had been away on winter break, before the FBI, acting on an "anonymous" tip (from Finch) could apprehend her. She had a brief instant message conversation with Finch afterward, acknowledging him as a worthy opponent and said she was looking forward to the next time. She ended the conversation with "Harold", letting him know that she knew who he was. As part of her plan to come face-to-face with Finch, Root anonymously contacted HR and put a hit on herself, under the name of Caroline Turing. Turing's Social Security number appeared through The Machine, making her a Person of Interest. Reese, discovering Turing was a psychologist, became one of her patients. Root had also hired a known con man to pretend to be another patient who posed a threat to her safety. . ]] Later that night, Turing was attacked by four assassins hired by Simmons. Reese managed to get her to safety in a hotel for the night, but the two were unknowingly on the FBI's radar as well. Under Donnelley's supervision, the FBI staged a full scale assault on the hotel in an attempt to catch Reese, while HR continued trying to get to Turing. With the help of Joss Carter and Finch, Turing was led to an underground tunnel system under the hotel. Reese instructed her to find Finch at the end of the tunnel, while he was holding off HR. As Finch was confronted by Alicia Corwin regarding his involvement with the Machine, Root killed Corwin with a gun shot to the head. She introduced herself as Root, and told him they had much to talk about. Finch drove away at gun point, with Corwin's body left behind. Planning to escape with Finch to Texas, Root stopped in Maryland where she gained access to Denton Weeks' house. She lured him there to overpower and question him about the whereabouts of the Machine. When he didn't tell her what she wanted to hear, she killed him by shooting him in the chest. She didn't know that at the same time, Reese had already tracked her down through her friend Hanna's case. At Washington D.C.'s Union Station, Reese managed to save Finch while Root escaped. She called him on his mobile phone later that day to thank him for solving Hanna's case and telling him that she would be in touch. While holding him captive, Root explained to Finch her desire is not to control the Machine, as he believed, but instead to "set it free". 2013 Several months later, Root, under the alias "Miss May", started to work as an assistant to Special Counsel at the Office of Special Counsel. . ]] While posing as assistant, she eavesdrops on the Special Counsel's phone calls. When Samantha Shaw appears to speak with Veronica Sinclair (Michael Cole's contact in the CIA), the person in the hotel is actually Root, who managed to get there first and tied Veronica in the bathroom. Pretending to be Veronica, she talks with Shaw for a while until she discovers what's happening. Root then tasers Shaw and zip-ties her to a chair, threatening to torture her with a hot clothing iron in order to obtain a name given to her by Daniel Aquino. However, she doesn't have time to follow through because Wilson's men arrive, forcing her to leave so as to not be spotted by anyone. She later holds Special Counsel at gunpoint when the virus infecting the Machine begins to impair its functioning in order to get more information on its whereabouts. She later threatens to kill Grace Hendricks when meeting with Harold again outside of Grace's home. The two of them begin to talk concerning what pay phone the Machine will call from after it crashes from the virus and reboots. They eventually go to the New York Public Library to intercept the impending call, while Decima mercenaries were fighting with Reese and Shaw below. She then has Harold redirect the call from its original pay phone to one closer to them, which she answers after the Machine finally crashes. However, unknown to Root, Finch splices the lines to let the call go to its original pay phone as well and directs Reese to answer it, thus giving control to both of them for 24 hours. Root leaves with Harold, using her control of the Machine to find and locate Lawrence Szilard, who had overseen the construction of the Machine's holding facility, though he was killed by a government agent with a sniper shot to his back before she could find anything out. After she killed two other assassins that were pursuing them, Finch finally confessed the Machine's location in Hanford, Washington to her, and they promptly traveled there. When Root and Finch arrived at the facility, she was horrified to discover the Machine had moved itself to another location. Heartbroken and in tears, she prepared to kill Finch for betraying her, though before she could, she was shot in the shoulder by Shaw and later tended to by Reese. After the four escaped from Special Counsel and Hersh, Root was interred by Finch to an insane asylum. As she walked down a hallway, she received a phone call from the Machine asking her if she can hear it, just as it had done before, to which she replies "Absolutely." The Machine later identifies Root as an "analog interface" and assigns her a new box, with a black outline and yellow corners. She becomes the only person who can actually converse with the machine. At the mental facility Root is now a patient of a psychiatrist, Dr. Carmichael, and is going under the alias "Robin". She claims to be hearing "voices" (implying the Machine) and continues giving Carmichael cryptic answers about what he thinks she believes. He later finds a phone in her pocket which turns out to be one he thought he had previously lost and tells the workers at the facility to lock up Root in solitary confinement with no contact with anything electronic. She tells him it's not good for her to be separated from "it", but Carmichael says it's for her own good. Root is later brought back into Carmichael's office because he wants to really know what she's talking about. When she asks what they are going to talk about, he says that they should discuss the truth. Smiling, Root begins telling Carmichael that the truth is a very vast thing, and that he is only the 43th smartest person in the building. She then goes on to reveal to Carmichael that she knows about how he cheated on his medical exams; his habit of smoking about nine cigarettes a week in the parking lot; how he pays for a bi-monthly massage therapy using crisp hundred dollar bills from a 7/11 cash machine, and how he spends time in online forums fantasizing about having sex with his patients, but not her. Root tells him that God was created 11 years ago, referring to the Machine, and that she's actually scared of what will happen. She then says that they are arguing about whether or not she'll kill him. The Machine is seen calculating the probability created its continued involvement with Root: a 28% chance of activating her as its Analog Interface leads to a significant probability of her capture and/or death, whilst her almost certainly carrying out her threatened murder has a 12% chance of leading to events resulting in the death of the Admin. Smaller probabilities are award to outcomes such as her becoming Auxilary-Admin, having a child (so trivial as to be deemed a non-relevant outcome), and global thermonuclear war (a more likely outcome than Aux_Admin). Intriguingly there is a blue field marked Operational Relevance, which ossilates beneath 2%. The Machine finally decides that currently the probability of successfully retasking Root is unknown. Victims *Trent Russell: orchestrated events so he would be murdered in revenge for the death of Hanna Frey *Michael Delancey: shot once in the chest by her partner, Gage *Scott Powell: attempted to have killed and framed for murder; failed *Pete Matheson: client; shot once in the head and staged to look like a suicide *Owen Reynolds: shot once in the head *Alicia Corwin: shot once in the head *Harold Finch: abducted and held captive at gunpoint; eventually rescued *Julie Davenport: poisoned *Denton Weeks: shot twice in the chest *Unnamed guard: attempted to shoot; failed *Veronica Sinclair: held captive; tortured *Samantha Shaw: held captive and attempted to torture; rescued *Special Counsel: tortured only *Three unnamed Decima Technology assassins: shot *Two unnamed ISA operatives: shot Trivia *Root was able to temporarily infiltrate Finch's private network when he attempted to do the same to her via what appeared to be a vulnerability in her system. While Finch and Reese's operations were not completely compromised, the Library did have to be temporarily abandoned and Finch did have to rebuild his entire network from scratch. It is unknown how much information Root was able to extract about the Machine while connected to Finch's network, although it seems to have been enough for the Machine to assign her a yellow box, signifying at least some knowledge of the Machine. *It is currently reasonable to assume what information she did take from Finch assisted her in the creation of the Caroline Turing identity, as well as her plot to ultimately capture Finch himself. *Root uses a Samsung NP300V4A Notebook, a Google Samsung Nexus S smartphone, and arms herself with a Heizer Defense DoubleTap 9mm pistol. *Unless Caroline Turing really has a background in psychology, one can assume that she may have gained the information for her evaluation of Reese's character profile through watching him for some time. *Root's Caroline Turing alias may be an allusion to Alan Turing, an early theorist on the subject of artificial intelligence and developer of the Turing Machine. *The name "Root" may originate from the Unix and Linux systems' root directory ("/"). "root" is another name for "superuser", a term used in both operating systems to designate a user who has extreme clearance and power, like the ability to delete the entire OS from a system and to change the computer's system directories. This ability is not present in OS's like Windows or Macintosh OS in order to prevent accidental destruction of one's own computer or corruption of the operating system. *Root's early mastering of the computer game "The Oregon Trail " shows that she possesses an analytical mind as the game is largely focused on the balancing, collection and expenditure of resources. Hunting also was a very important component. Failure in a hunt could lead to starvation while overhunting might lead to a lack of resources later in the game. Additionally, random hazards such as weather and disease must be addressed and no matter how well one has played the game, could prove to be fatal. Additionally, the game's unique scoring system was designed to greater reward those who started the game with the fewer resources. *Root's real name, Samantha Groves, might be a reference to Andrew S. Grove, former CEO of Intel, who wrote the book "Only the Paranoid Survive". The title was mentioned by Finch in after Root hacked into the Library. es:Root Category:Characters Category:Persons of Interest Category:Main Characters Category:Characters with yellow box Category:Female Characters Category:Antagonists